


An Honorable Man

by bonnie_wee_swordsman



Series: Imagine Claire and Jamie Prompts [2]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Angst, Book 3: Voyager, Grief, Healing, Mourning, Outlander - Freeform, Voyager
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-24 01:46:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7488543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonnie_wee_swordsman/pseuds/bonnie_wee_swordsman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1948, Claire comes across two posters from the time of her disappearance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Honorable Man

_Oxfordshire, 1948_

The creaking floorboard seemed as loud as a scream in the blackened passage, the sound cutting through the murky haze like vinegar dropped into oil. My body roared out of lassitude to go taut as a line, eyes squeezing tight as I begged through the door to my right.

_Don’t wake up….Please don’t…Just…don’t…_

He hadn’t asked me if I’d wanted him to sleep beside me, not even when he’d shown me to the bedroom. _His_ bedroom. Once assured that I needed no refreshment, assistance with my bag, or other interaction, he’d merely uttered a short, “Goodnight, Claire,” and made his way into the spare room, pulling the door decisively shut behind him.

I opened my eyes and flooded with relief. _He hadn’t woken_ ; or if he had, he wasn’t coming out to investigate. My body shook uncontrollably from the unaccustomed rush of emotions, and I stood motionless for a minute, letting my heart resume it’s plodding, deadened pace once more. _Back under._

I continued along the corridor with a final glance at the closed door.

_God knew, we both needed comfort tonight…but we were not the ones to provide it to one another. I doubted we ever would be._

* * *

 

_He_ had _tried. Really. Done his best to engage me on the long drive from Inverness. Smiled and joked. Talked about Boston. Plans to begin packing up the house in Oxford. The new home we’d have in Massachusetts. The fresh start we’d make, Claire!_

_I’d contrived a smile. Answered for a time._

Quite right. Yes, lovely.   
Mmhm? Of course.   
Mmhm.   
Yes.

_Reflexes. The blessed children of habit. Mindless things._

_I was numb. Wildly. Frenetically._ Numb _. Not processing. Not thinking. Just basic, whirring, chemical existence. Myself. A self that had shrunken, shriveled, and finally—crucial fibers atrophied from disuse—detached. It floated around the cavernous holds inside me, hearing the echoes dance through the chambers. All those empty places…_

_We were passing Carlisle before I became aware that Frank had stopped trying to get me to speak. His face was as expressionless as mine. We drove the rest of the way in silence._

* * *

 

Frank’s was a small kitchen, and conspicuously bare. No curtains, pictures, or other homey embellishments were visible in the stark overhead light, same as the rest of the house. There was a dirty cup and plate on the countertop that appeared to have been there for some time. It was, however, orderly, and I found a tin of fragrant chamomile almost at once. _No matter, still plenty to do. Measure the leaves. Measure them again. Place them in the infuser. Infuser in the teapot. Draw the water. Measure that, too, to get the balance just so. Ensure the kettle is placed properly so as not to scorch. Then…wait…._

My chest began to tingle; a slight prickling around my edges, working insidiously inward. My hands clenched, sickeningly slick with damp.

_Fathoms. Thick, slow. Lapping heavily against metal…_

A clock chimed 2:00, and I shuddered in relief: _clocks. I can spend a few minutes thinking about clocks._

It was a small, handsome specimen hanging in the adjacent foyer. An heirloom of some kind; Frank’s father’s, maybe? The wood was of good quality, though it very much needed a coat of polish. The face boasted a delicate filigree sunburst spreading from the center to lasso each number with a long, narrow loop of gold. _Like a helm._

I had drifted past it many times on the road from Inverness. The wheel on the steel door, the latter looming hundreds and hundreds of feet up into the darkness of the innermost chamber. Erected almost the moment I’d come through the stones; fortified later by promises and the soot of burnt clothing on the air. By pragmatism. Minutia.

With every mile marker, every silent petrol stop, I turned that wheel another inch tighter. Another degree toward safety. Dark, glutinous mass mustered ominously on the other side, infinite seas of it, but it couldn’t touch me.

_Tighter_.

Would _never_ touch me.

_Tighter_.

Surely couldn’t…

_…Clocks. That’s it, Beauchamp,_ clocks _. The first chiming clocks were—were—invented by the Chinese, maybe._

The shrieking of the kettle brought me gratefully back to the stove. _Pour the water carefully into the teapot. Replace the porcelain lid. Ten minutes for the leaves to steep….Ten?_

Prickles up my spine.

_None of that._ Casting my eyes about, I made for the door at the opposite end of the kitchen. A flick of the switch revealed Frank’s study…and a disaster. There was scarcely a square inch of wood visible under all the papers, books, folders, and reports littering the massive desk. There was even a half-eaten bun, hard as a rock, left forgotten on a plate. With a pang, I remembered the kitchen. _He hadn’t spared a moment even for tidying up after getting the call from Inverness._

Closing the door quietly behind me, I turned to the desk with something faintly resembling eagerness. _It could take a quarter of an hour to get this lot in order; maybe more, if I take care_. I marked the pages of the open books and lined them up between bookends. Swept the rubbish into the bin. Made a tidy stack of the various papers and folders. Straightened the sofa pillows. Glanced at a clock: only five minutes gone. _Bloody hell._

I flipped open the folder on the top of the newly-made stack, praying that Frank’s latest research was a good read.

**_MISSING_ **

_From Craigh na Dun, Inverness, 31st of October 1946._

_£1,500 REWARD for more information on her whereabouts._

Her hair was intensely curly. The photograph had been taken just a few days before she went missing. Smiling, but lips pressed together such that she appeared mildly annoyed, perhaps at being put on the spot, for Frank had insisted on the photo to commemorate the excursion to some ruin or other. But she _was_ happy, as far as she had known. I traced her lines with a fingertip, studying, trying to remember her. She was a war veteran. A nurse. A historian’s wife. On the very cusp of the steady life she craved, one that would have taken place in this very house. Hot baths, telephones, and the occasional dull faculty party. _Lord_ , she would have owned a _dozen_ vases by now. Who had she been since? _And now_? Had she returned to her world of store-bought jumpers and hot-water geysers? Or was it a _changeling_ that had stumbled back down the hill of _Craigh na Dun_ and now contrived to tread the boards of Claire Randall’s life?

Newspaper clippings. Police forms. Letters—dozens of them—from Inverness explaining that _No, Mr. Randall, no additional leads had turned up, same as last time and the one before, and you needn’t write, we’ll phone you if_ —and so on. Witness transcripts. Suspect lists. Reports. Folios crammed with Frank’s own handwritten notes, leads, and theories. For _years_ , he had stayed abreast of all of it, even after returning to Oxford. J _ust forget about me, Frank_ , I pleaded silently to the spare room. _Just leave. Let_ me _leave. You deserve someone who loves you like you loved this woman_. But on it went, sheaf upon sheaf, until—

_The giant wheel turned back one degree with a resounding, metallic_ // _TOCK_ //.

A simple line drawing. Crude, even. The nose and mouth were clearly wrong. The brow too fine and delicate. But the line of the jaw. The beauty of the hollowed cheek.  The drape of the plaid fastened at the shoulder with a brooch. The slanted eyes, “possibly blue” according to the typed description, staring up at me from the tabletop under a scotch bonnet…

Strange, really…the way the mind chooses to react to the impossible. More often than not, it dismisses out of hand. Sometimes rationalizes. Perhaps demands to know the _how_? The _how could it possibly_?? Or…

“ _DAMN YOU._ ”

// _Tock_ //

“We could have run.” Teeth gritted, my voice trembled violently—I hadn’t really heard it in some time. I leaned over the desk like a judge passing sentence from the bench, my face contorting grotesquely with each ember-hot word. “We could have _run_. Run from _Craigh na Dun_ and _never—looked—back_.”

He stared back at me. _Eyes impassive._

// _Tock_ //

“You _chose_ to die on that field. Chose your men and your FUCKING _honor_ over—” A snarl escaped my throat, and I slammed both hands down onto the stack and flung it //TOCK// across the room, hundreds of pages cutting through the air like a hail of daggers. “Did it _help_?” I spat into the cascade, following the path of one page, then another, searching. “Ease the pain? Spare you the physical agony? Did your HONOR do you any _goddamn_ good at the end??”

// _TOCK_ //

_There_. Staring up at me amid the rest of the fallen. _Eyes defiant._

//TOCK//

“What did it feel like, _hm_?” I stood tall, leering down into his face, shaking with rage, “ANSWER ME! When they //TOCK// ran you through—when the bullets //TOCK// ripped your body to shreds—when the bayonet tore //TOCK// you apart—when they shot you in the h-head and the //TOCK// crows came to feast on the rest of you—did your goddamn //TOCK// fucking HONORABLE choice make it feel _all better_??”

//TOCK//

“ _DID IT_??”

I snapped down like a striking snake, pummeling him with each word.

“—TELL—”

//TOCK//

“—ME—”

//TOCK//

“—HOW—”

//TOCK// //TOCK//

“—IT—”

//TOCK//  //TOCK// //TOCK//

“— _FUCKING_ —FELT— _JA_ —”

And in that second, I broke. The flood doors exploded open, and I screamed the depths of my shattered soul into the oncoming seas of Jamie’s blood—

_…and then, the little life inside me sparked for the first time._

The scream transformed into a gasp that started at the very soles of my feet. It seemed to go on forever as I melted to the paper-strewn floor. “ _Ohhhhh_ …oh, _there_ you are…” Laughter and tears burst out of me simultaneously, each fighting with all their might for control of my voice as I cradled the tiny person inside me. “ _Yes_ , yes, I feel you there… _I can feel you_ … _Mama’s got you_ …”

Somewhere in the house, a board creaked.

I spread my fingers so widely over my belly that they shook, shielding, reassuring. “I’m _here_ …Nothing’s going to happen to you… _I promise_.”

I knelt there on the field of documents for a very long time, rocking, crooning soft nothings in the lamplight. I craned my head down to be as close as possible, wishing I could lay a kiss on the promise growing in my body, and then…

Slanted eyes locked on mine. _Eyes filled with_ … _such ferocious sadness._..

“Jamie…”

I leaned forward and laid my palms on the inked lines of his cheek, his shoulder, my whole body shaking with the thundering marches of desolation. “…Oh… _God…Jamie._..”

The paper crinkled violently under my clutching fingers, right as his child quickened within me again. A laugh choked its way out between the sobs as I returned a hand to my belly. “ _Yes_ , little one, that’s your father!” My voice cracked. “ _Right_ there…you can feel him, can’t you?” I squeezed my eyes tight, tears pattering on the papers beneath as I pressed hard with my palm, trying to pass the tender ‘J’ right through the layers to the womb. _Her father’s touch._

“You’ll—you’ll never meet him…you’ll never even— _know—his—name_ —” I broke off, my abdominal muscles working furiously to force air, to pass words through lips that would not part. It was a long time before I could force out, “…but he _loved you_ …very— _very_ much. And he gave us up…sent us here…so that you—could have— _a chance_ …”

I dissolved, then, laid down on the scattered remnants of my existence and surrendered, ecstatic joy and utter despair so perfectly and inextricably intertwined as I wept on the ground, Jamie keeping sentinel.

The titanic doors had been utterly destroyed, never to be rebuilt. There wasn’t enough steel left on earth to erect such a structure a second time. The tortured reality of Jamie’s death, his loss, his agony, his _blood_ , had crashed over me. Held back for so long, it had slammed into me, tumbled me over and over beneath the surface to rid me of the concept of _up_ , and dragged me far, _so far_ from home. I was sodden. Weak. Starving. Gasping. Freezing…but _afloat_ , in the tiniest lifeboat imaginable. Never to escape the raging torrent—never to forget the constant heaving of currents and waves beneath as it carried me— _but never to sink under it again._

“I hope she’s just like you,” I whispered, as I ran my thumb over his temple and ear, seeing not ink and paper, but copper waves in sunlight. “So brave…and _honorable_.”

Fibers were beginning to reknit, tethering that lost, drifting self once more to something solid; but time slipped away entirely as I lay there curled on my side, holding Jamie in one hand and our child in the other.

* * *

 

When I awoke, blinking in the morning light, my back and limbs ached viciously, and the air of the study was shockingly chilly against my cheek.

But sometime in the night, a blanket had been laid…no… _tucked_ around me.

_And around Jamie’s child._


End file.
